Driving Adoption for Office 365, Part 2

Hopefully, you read the first part in this series and gained insight why adoption is so important for the success of Office 365 within your organization. We are now moving forward with our digital transformation roadmap. This article describes how to set vision and goals as well as define business scenarios.

Vision and Goals

You need to sit down and really think through why you are using, or are going to use, Office 365. What do you want to achieve as an organization with Office 365? Write this down in one strong statement. For example:

“We want our employees to work anywhere, anytime, and on any device with up-to-date and relevant content.”

The above statement comes from one of our customers. Why is this important? In the previous article, I mentioned you must answer the following question from the business:

“What’s in it for me?”

You are going to use the vision statement in your communication tools toward the business. The statement is going to answer their question. You can also apply goals to emphasize the vision. For example:

Is a single-entry point for information and news

Showcases tools and communication channels

Facilitates information sharing

Is a depository of information on key topics

Builds bridges between the company’s Intranet and local Intranets

Again, the goals should support your vision statement and answer the question from the business.

Business Scenarios

Don’t use technology just because you can. Remember, you need to prove the benefits for the business. The vision describes why you are going to use Office 365. The business scenarios describe how you are going to use Office 365. I listed a couple common scenarios:

Search to find content and colleagues

Collaboration within projects and teams

Sharing ideas and expertise

My personal documents

Have you noticed something is missing? No mention of any Office 365 tools! That’s because it doesn’t matter at this point. The benefits for the business matters. For example, you will be able to collaborate with your colleagues in a team or share ideas and expertise. Let’s imagine you, at this point, add an Office 365 tool, such as Search to find content and colleagues with Delve. You are immediately committing yourself to Delve while you aren’t even sure Delve matches the requirements or the culture of the business. Please, hold off until later with the assignment of tools. We are going to dive into this in another part of the series.

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Are you struggling to find business scenarios? No need to worry. The Office 365 FastTrack center is here to help:

Microsoft provides you with six business scenarios to implement quick wins within your organization. It is even kind enough to provide a wide selection of adoption materials. These vary from emails to posters, videos, and complete online training classes. Awesome! Still in need of inspiration? Not my favorite approach, but look at the available tools at your Office 365 home page:

You are now approaching things from a technology perspective. Not my favorite or recommended approach but for inspiration purposes, I tend to make an exception. For example, you discover Planner. Try it out and perhaps you see opportunities for project management scenarios.

Sponsored

We now have our vision, goals, and business scenarios. What’s next? The following part of this series will talk about stakeholders and audience. Stay tuned!